The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud (1900)

achieved. I shall have occasion elsewhere to give a detailed account of the form which the technique of this procedure has finally assumed, and of
the results of my efforts. In the course of these psycho-analytic studies, I happened upon the question of dream-interpretation. My patients, after I
had pledged them to inform me of all the ideas and thoughts which occurred to them in connection with a given theme, related their dreams, and
thus taught me that a dream may be interpolated in the psychic concatenation, which may be followed backwards from a pathological idea into
the patient's memory. The next step was to treat the dream itself as a symptom, and to apply to it the method of interpretation which had been
worked out for such symptoms.
For this a certain psychic preparation on the part of the patient is necessary. A twofold effort is made, to stimulate his attentiveness in respect of
his psychic perceptions, and to eliminate the critical spirit in which he is ordinarily in the habit of viewing such thoughts as come to the surface.
For the purpose of self-observation with concentrated attention it is advantageous that the patient should take up a restful position and close his
eyes; he must be explicitly instructed to renounce all criticism of the thought-formations which he may perceive. He must also be told that the
success of the psycho-analysis depends upon his noting and communicating everything that passes through his mind, and that he must not allow
himself to suppress one idea because it seems to him unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems nonsensical. He must
preserve an absolute impartiality in respect to his ideas; for if he is unsuccessful in finding the desired solution of the dream, the obsessional idea,
or the like, it will be because he permits himself to be critical of them.
I have noticed in the course of my psycho-analytical work that the psychological state of a man in an attitude of reflection is entirely different
from that of a man who is observing his psychic processes. In reflection there is a greater play of psychic activity than in the most attentive selfobservation;
this is shown even by the tense attitude and the wrinkled brow of the man in a state of reflection, as opposed to the mimic tranquillity
of the man observing himself. In both cases there must be concentrated attention, but the reflective man makes use of his critical faculties, with
the result that he rejects some of the thoughts which rise into consciousness after he has become aware of them, and abruptly interrupts others, so
that he does not follow the lines of thought which they would otherwise open up for him; while in respect of yet other thoughts he is able to
behave in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all - that is to say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In selfobservation,
on the other hand, he has but one task - that of suppressing criticism; if he succeeds in doing this, an unlimited number of thoughts
enter his consciousness which would otherwise have eluded his grasp. With the aid of the material thus obtained - material which is new to the
self-observer - it is possible to achieve the interpretation of pathological ideas, and also that of dream-formations. As will be seen, the point is to
induce a psychic state which is in some degree analogous, as regards the distribution of psychic energy (mobile attention), to the state of the mind
before falling asleep - and also, of course, to the hypnotic state. On falling asleep the undesired ideas emerge, owing to the slackening of a certain
arbitrary (and, of course, also critical) action, which is allowed to influence the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to speak of fatigue as the
reason of this slackening; the emerging undesired ideas are changed into visual and auditory images. In the condition which it utilized for the
analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and deliberately renounced, and the psychic energy thus saved (or some part
of it) is employed in attentively tracking the undesired thoughts which now come to the surface - thoughts which retain their identity as ideas (in
which the condition differs from the state of falling asleep). Undesired ideas are thus changed into desired ones.
There are many people who do not seem to find it easy to adopt the required attitude toward the apparently "freely rising" ideas, and to renounce
the criticism which is otherwise applied to them. The "undesired ideas" habitually evoke the most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent them
from coming to the surface. But if we may credit our great poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller, the essential condition of poetical creation
includes a very similar attitude. In a certain passage in his correspondence with Korner (for the tracing of which we are indebted to Otto Rank),
Schiller replies in the following words to a friend who complains of his lack of creative power: "The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to
me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory.
Apparently it is not good - and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind - if the intellect examines too closely the ideas already pouring in,
as it were, at the gates. Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance
from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing
a very serviceable link. The intellect cannot judge all these ideas unless it can retain them until it has considered them in connection with these
other ideas. In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell,
and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the
momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from
the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely" (letter of December 1, 1788).
And yet, such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of the intellect, as Schiller puts it, such a translation into the condition of uncritical selfobservation,
is by no means difficult.
Most of my patients accomplish it after my first instructions. I myself can do so very completely, if I assist the process by writing down the ideas
that flash through my mind. The quantum of psychic energy by which the critical activity is thus reduced, and by which the intensity of selfobservation
may be increased, varies considerably according to the subject-matter upon which the attention is to be fixed.
The first step in the application of this procedure teaches us that one cannot make the dream as a whole the object of one's attention, but only the
individual components of its content. If I ask a patient who is as yet unpractised: "What occurs to you in connection with this dream?" he is
unable, as a rule, to fix upon anything in his psychic field of vision. I must first dissect the dream for him; then, in connection with each fragment,
he gives me a number of ideas which may be described as the thoughts behind this part of the dream. In this first and important condition, then,